When you run smbd -V on your Snow Leopard installation, you'll see it's running SAMBA version 3.0.28a-apple. While I'm not sure how much difference the "-apple" makes, version 3.0.28a is old. Very old. In other words, it's riddled with bugs. Apple hasn't updated SAMBA in 3 years, and for Lion, they're dumping it altogether for something homegrown. The reason? SAMBA is now GPLv3.

"Apple's NFS implementation was horrible until sometime after 10.5 - and NFS has been an open spec since the 80s. I somehow doubt that they're going to come up with a reasonable 1.0 release of this mess.

The reason why NFS was horrible is because they hadn't touched it in something like 20 years. Apple has 100 'engineering resources' (a made up unit for this example) that they can allocate, do they allocate these said resources to features and parts of the operating system very few utilise or do they focus in their energies on the parts that 90% of the end users touch on a daily basis? SMB2 is fully documented
"

Have fun there is a reason why Samba has taken over 12 months to get to a working copy of SMB2. SMB2 documentation does not match real world implementation by MS. This is why the EU sanctions run for so long against MS. MS did not have valid documentation as soon as the samba developers started writing test cases from the MS documentation error after error appeared. Lot of the errors were legacy code recycled for SMB2. That MS themselves had not documented the errors.

Samba has built test-cases testing every feature of SMB2. In the process Samba also has made MS correct bugs. There has been a joint operation between Samba and MS to sort out the mess.

Yes SMB2 is an impressive example why you cannot trust MS to write a protocol alone. MS internals don't seam to be upto the job.

Also to be fun MS SMB2 documentation does not include extensions that have been added to MS implementation to support old SMB1 functionality on SMB2 protocol for Unix based systems. Yes these features are in Vista sp1 and up.

Basically only one party has the correct information Samba. Usage of GPLv3 code in the form of test-cases will still be required if Apple wants their code to work.

Most people are not aware that Samba hosts the meet up to compared SMB implementations. Each SMB implementation is free to add extensions. SMB2 MS tried skipping out on this process. Now they are back in the process MS now has to accept alterations from other parties as well.

Just accept the fact SMB is not Microsofts. Most nas servers and other items providing SMB are not Microsofts. Samba is common but there are about 8 different implementations out there. Lot have not moved my to SMB2 yet due to the blockade on valid information to build information.

Out of the process of sorting SMB2 out as well. Samba has patent protection from MS. This is why is so funny. Apple path may equal them having to hand over cash.